NEWS: Big news! Most grapes are kissing cousins!
Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:32 am
I have been waiting for years, ever since I heard about the work of Carole Meredith analyzing grape genetic markers, for someone to do a large-scale study of those markers. Now an article in New Scientist ( http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... nline-news ) discusses research done on 583 cultivars, which they claim represents every cultivated variety in existance! The money shot is this picture, showing the known relationships:
I highly recommend clicking through to the full text of the article to see the "family tree" in all its glory: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/ ... l.pdf+html
Lest you get too excited, it's not really a family tree, because the ultimate parents aren't known in most cases. In other words, though it looks like Traminer is the parent, it's really just one of many.
Walt
I highly recommend clicking through to the full text of the article to see the "family tree" in all its glory: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/ ... l.pdf+html
Lest you get too excited, it's not really a family tree, because the ultimate parents aren't known in most cases. In other words, though it looks like Traminer is the parent, it's really just one of many.
Walt